Mary Nelson and the Longstanding Mission to Build a Lifeline for Underprivileged Syracuse Families

Mary Nelson, founder of Mary Nelson Youth Center, grew up in the migrant labor camps of central New York, caring for her younger siblings at only eight years old while her family worked the fields. Caregiving, she believes, has been embedded within her for as long as she can remember. What she didn’t know was that loss would become the language through which she would serve the city.

In 2002, Nelson lost her nephew Darryl Patterson to a tragic incident. She had been working to educate him, investing in his future. His passing, she recalls, left her devastated, but not paralyzed. Home from her hospital job one afternoon, she watched police stop a young man near her house after he ran through the neighborhood. When she asked why he was not in school, Nelson recalls that he told her he had been trying to earn money for college books. 

“That changed me. It made me realize how many young people think they can’t make it because they don’t have support,” she says. Weeks later, Nelson recalls organizing a backyard block party on Syracuse’s South Side, handing out school supplies to underprivileged children who might otherwise go without them. 

The gathering, she notes, was meant to create peace after tumultuous experiences had shaken the neighborhood. It also became the foundation for something larger.

The purpose-driven initiative materialized into the Mary Nelson Youth Center, formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2009. Since its inception, the youth center has opened its doors for families and individuals looking for food, school supplies, guidance, or simply a place where someone knows their name. 

“I want to be known as a resource,” Nelson says. “I want people to be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Ms. Mary, I need help,’ and know we’re going to try to help them.”

Over the past 24 years, Nelson has continued working full-time at a Syracuse hospital while running the center. According to her, the foundation operates Monday through Friday at its South Salina Street location, offering daily meals, a food pantry, computer access, job placement assistance, legal counseling, women’s support groups, clothing and furniture giveaways, diaper distribution, and community safety initiatives. Nelson adds that the center serves children from early education through college-age years while also helping parents facing instability. 

The foundation’s reach has drawn national attention as a major TV network renovated the Mary Nelson Youth Center in 2022, along with high-profile visitors and community awards. For her, those recognitions stand as reminders that people were paying attention to the needs of her community. “When you’re doing the right thing, the right people show up to help,” she adds. 

Nelson also points to the annual Back2School Supply Giveaway, held each August, which has grown into a full community expo with health screenings, career resources, and financial literacy advisors, offering everything a family might need to face a new year. This comes from her insistence that helping young people requires helping the people raising them. 

“You can do great things for kids, but if you don’t help the family, you’re not helping the foundation,” she says. 

Still, Nelson believes that the center has outgrown itself. Her vision for what’s next is concrete: an addition to the Mary Nelson Youth Center that would house an indoor basketball gym, and in its second phase, transitional housing for homeless youth. She sees young people walking the streets of her city, some arriving at her food pantry alone, feeding themselves, yet left on their own once the doors are closed. She believes a permanent haven is the only adequate answer. 

The proposed expansion remains tied closely to fundraising efforts, including the organization’s Beyond the Dream Gala in October, which she hopes will move the new build closer to reality. She plans to retire from the hospital and devote herself fully to the center, as she believes this is exactly the moment she was built for. 

Even after enduring the deaths of multiple family members over the years, Nelson believes that service became the place where she processed grief rather than surrendered to it. The center, in many ways, became her form of healing.

“This is my life journey,” she says. “I want families to know they have somewhere safe to go, somewhere they can call home. That’s where my work finds meaning.” 

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